Sunday, March 30, 2014

At the Intersection of Fixed and Random Resources...

...that's where the most vital aspects of economic activity take place. However, the strength of this intersection is not yet recognized for the potential stability it holds, particularly given its hidden potential for lower income level participation in the economy. Our time (economic participation in aggregate) counts as the primary fixed - or finite - resource we have. That makes time use the main driver of all resource use in economies overall: hence aggregate valuation levels.

Whereas most resources we engage with, exist all along a relative continuum of scarcity to abundance. Societies invariably run into problems if they try to substitute random resources for time use, without adequate understanding how fixed time capacity impacts lower income levels of participation. International monetary flows cannot assist lower income in the same capacity as higher income, because the flows simply cannot stretch far enough. I don't mean this in terms of innovation, where production can substitute for time use, but in terms of income disparities.

The reality is that a substantial amount of supply and demand is not even materializing in the U.S. marketplace presently, whether by time based services or product separate from time. Just the same, redistribution is not the answer to participation at lower income levels. Redistribution seeks not to make further participation possible, but to "make up" for lack of space in economic inclusion. Time arbitrage therefore needs to take place at a fixed access point of entry, so that lower incomes can also have ongoing access to what is widely considered as modern economic life. Coordinating for needed services could go a long way to reduce informal economies as well - some of which are more negative than others.

Fortunately, higher income sections of population can continue receiving random resource quantities to compensate for time - much of which occurs through international monetary flows. What that means is that their income distributions would not be substantially affected by greater knowledge dispersal. How do we know this to be the case? Knowledge use patterns in services closely follow the monetary valuations of international monetary flows. People can coordinate with time arbitrage for services, where real estate does not have these additional valuations That would allow higher income levels to depend on economic circumstances as they now exist. Indeed, much of the struggle between left and right is to force a better distribution from the one percent to the top twenty or thirty percent - which is altogether a separate issue from the one I am addressing.

However, the discussion between left and right is not so much about further economic growth, as it is about particular forms of redistribution that are politically preferred. Even if either of those forms were to materialize, such "normalization" does not really address the breakdown between classes which still threatens societal progress. At stake is the fact that lower income levels need to establish a different form of economic equilibrium, which would also be capable of bringing further growth into the system overall.

Some of the terminology I use is a bit unfamiliar, and I'm still trying to learn how to simplify my thoughts. After beginning this post, I realized I needed to address some foundations which have been central to my ongoing project. What also needs to be emphasized, is that lower income levels can experience growth and sustainability without threatening the ways in which upper income levels experience knowledge use or wealth distributions. These two realms can be split into different production modes, so that they will experience their time use in different settings of societal coordination. This would also allow middle to upper income levels to prosper without the uncertainty they continue to experience now, as they try unsuccessfully to redistribute knowledge use down to lower income levels.

Consider for instance that land is also a fixed quantity. If skills and knowledge use can be maintained at all income levels (robots or no), land as a fixed quantity need not become problematic again, as it was prior to the Industrial Revolution. We have to remember that robot use with inadequate skills inclusion by humans, would eventually force people to become dependent upon land again, in negative ways. In developed countries, fixed amounts of land are not a crucial element as important as fixed amounts of time, for multiple reasons. The only reason prime land "appears" crucial now, is that knowledge use has yet to be optimized in non prime land areas.

Therefore - fortunately - land quantities still have a strong capacity to operate in developed economies as a random resource element. For the purposes of this blogger, most random resource elements always hold a secondary position to time use, because innovation of all kinds allows populations to overcome randomness. Thus monetary valuations and purposes of land, depend upon whether they gain exposure to the international economy.

This is one of the fundamental aspects of the present, which lower income environments will need to address in the near future. While lower income levels could also generate additional land value through coordination in the future, much of it would probably not reach the stratospheric heights in valuation associated with the most desirable real estate. Nor does it need to - the problem is disentangling prime knowledge use limitations from prime real estate locations, for a broader marketplace.

From the beginning of this blog, I have emphasized the finite nature of time use as anchor. Those who have kept up with me, know that I like to explore the possible "whys" that give the nominal anchor its actual strength: that is, why does this measure have such tremendous capacity to provide monetary stability in the first place? Hopefully this post has given my readers additional means to understand how my beliefs "fit" into popular belief patterns of the day. While some of my beliefs are market monetarist in nature, there are of course additional elements which I utilize to address the problems of long term unemployment, in particular.

Supply and demand are everything, in terms of the actual engagement on the part of communities in the economies around them. The beauty of looking at economies in supply/demand terms, is that the whole can potentially be represented in economies large and small, and everyone can contribute to the discussion. When monetary policy elects to follow the intersection of resources with supply and demand, we gain the greatest degree of economic stability possible. What's more, we gain the capacity to integrate lower and higher income economic circumstances, while understanding the differences between them.